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Thursday, January 16, 2014

Tracing an ancestor in the South African Constabulary

If your ancestor served in
the South African Constabulary (SAC), his Record of Conduct and Service is an
important source of information.

These personnel files provide the individual’s
full name, birthplace and date, a detailed physical description, his marital
status, occupation, religion, list of promotions or transfers, any medical
reports, date of and reason for discharge, address in cases of change of
location, as well as name and address of next-of-kin. Should he have defaulted
in any way during his period of service that will show in the record.

The South African
Constabulary was established to keep law and order in the Transvaal, Orange
River Colony (Orange Free State) and Swaziland. It
was a semi-military force recruited from British men in the Cape and Natal as well as from further afield – Britain, Australia,
New Zealand, India and Ceylon. Over 1200 Canadians served
in the SAC; their records are held in South Africa.

There are 9 452 Records of
Conduct and Service files held in the National Archives, Pretoria. These are indexed and reflected on
NAAIRS at www.national.archives.gov.za under the database TAB. Search on your
ancestor’s name to find the full file reference.

To access the record or
acquire a digital copy of the contents, rather than attempting to involve the
various SA archival repositories directly, it’s advisable to delegate to a
private researcher or alternatively to use the eggsa document-ordering
facility. For more about the latter see http://www.eggsa.org/sales/help_archive_docs.htm

In the Free State the SAC,
initially known as the ORC (Orange River Contingent) was later (1908 - 1913)
the ORC Police. Filmed records are available via FamilySearch: read more at